


The Five Times Bobby Drake Almost Went To a Gay Bar

by Nesquik97



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Gen, Inner psychology kinda, It's the Marvel Universe so no one ages like they should, Just an excuse for me to go through Bobby's history tbqh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-12 07:43:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12954558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nesquik97/pseuds/Nesquik97
Summary: You're saying Bobby Drake spent 50 years of continuity not trying to act upon his desires? You're wrong.An assortment of episodes in Bobby's life where he almost went to a bar, but didn't, because he's the worst. A voyage across teams, towns and decades.





	The Five Times Bobby Drake Almost Went To a Gay Bar

It was August, and it was warm. Bobby never liked when it was warm. He had that instinctive desire to coat himself in a thin sheet of ice, or to just casually drop the temperature of the humid air surrounding him, but such actions would inevitably draw attention to him as soon as he was outside of Professor Xavier’s Westchester County mansion. And this evening, he was not at the mansion.  
  
He had read about the riots in the papers. They condemned the perverts, but somehow, Bobby had felt an inclination towards them. He had rationalized it by likening their struggles to the struggles of mutants – these “sodomites” had been chased out of their homes, used and abused, left destitute and homeless, but still persevered and found a family. Much like Bobby himself, he had thought when he bought the train ticket to Manhattan that morning. He had told Scott and the Professor that he had a date down by the village, and although that was a lie, Bobby secretly hoped that it would turn out to be true after all. But for the moment, Bobby still had to make it up 8th Street to the Village, despite his burning ears.  
  
He just had to make it across the big intersection of 8th, 6th, Christopher and Greenwich, full of streetlights and crossings. It was so big, there was even a large triangle of elevated cement in the middle to give the pedestrians a moment of respite before heading on. Once across, he’d be among the tightly clustered brownstones and tall birch trees that made Greenwich such an intimate experience. There, he could melt into the shadows of the fire escapes and verdant trees, reaching into the moonlit sky. There, they might not see him. Like in a training sequence in the Danger Room, Bobby shot forward in a mad dash, avoiding taxis and other cars, not even stopping on the pedestrian triangle, until he was safely on the other side of 6th Avenue before he caught his breath. Some cars honked, some people starred, but Bobby was sure that such a display of reckless abandon would keep people’s minds far away from his actual goal. His ears, however, were still burning, now even more than before. Probably the adrenaline from crossing the street with reckless abandon, Bobby thought, even though he hadn’t even felt like this when the X-Men had first confronted Magneto at Cape Canaveral some four years ago.  
  
When Bobby heard the chants and yells from further down the streetlight-lit road, the hairs on the back of his arms stood up and a quick series of aimless and random turns ensued, placing the young mutant on Bleecker Street, having followed a semi-circle to avoid the Stonewall Inn, the place he had read in the papers about. He could hear their screams again and occasionally a loud bang, like someone hitting a car or a trash can or another object made of metal. He stood under a young oak tree for a while, its leaves gently rustling in the evening air, the ice dripping from his ears, before putting one foot in front of another, first slowly, then ever faster, until he was more or less sprinting towards the little green enclosure on Christopher Street, across the narrow street from the bar. Over fifty people had gathered there and they were yelling. There were men of all colors and sizes, mostly young though, and some where even dressed as ladies. Bobby chuckled. They didn’t look worse than he had when he still wore the Professor’s little booties, back when he was still more of a snowman than an Iceman.  
  
The mood of the crowd was electric and contagious, and before long Bobby found himself gathered between some haggard boys and a muscled, Latino man and began chanting and yelling along with them. “No more raids!” was a reoccurring slogan, and riding the feeling of finally being part of something greater than five kids and a bald man, Bobby formed a ball of ice and threw it at a police car, leaving a rather sizable dent, yet the weapon of the crime dissolved into water before the police or any of the bar’s clients could notice where this icy projectile had come from in the dog days of summer.  
  
“We’re all people!” Bobby yelled with the crowd. That made him stutter. We?, he wondered. Had he said we? Was he one of these people? These black men wearing lipstick and dresses? These blond boys wearing short shorts, suspenders and little else? Maybe he meant that all people, homosexuals and mutants, were all people? Deep down though, Bobby knew what he had meant. And so, rationalizing that it was late and that he should get sleep, in case there was a mission tomorrow, Bobby ran back down Christopher Street, leaving the crowd to enter and take back the bar on their own. His ears were burning again.

**Author's Note:**

> Whoo, first time posting anything!
> 
> Next chapter will be set during Bobby's Champions days. I know nothing about 70s LA or its gay culture. Send help.


End file.
